Review: Charming Characters and Clever Writing Lead "The Lavender Hill Mob" (Remembering Sir Alec Guinness)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 46 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux


The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: U.K.
Running time: 81 minutes (1 hour, 21 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Charles Crichton
WRITER: T.E.B. Clarke
PRODUCER: Michael Balcon
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Douglas Slocombe (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Seth Holt
COMPOSER: Georges Auric
Academy Award winner

CRIME/COMEDY

Starring: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding, Edie Martin, John Salew, Ronald Adam, Arthur Hambling, Gibb McLaughlin, John Gregson, and Audrey Hepburn

The subject of this movie review is The Lavender Hill Mob, a 1951 British crime comedy. Directed by Charles Crichton, the film stars Sir Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway in a story about a plot to steal gold bullion.

Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) is a dedicated bank clerk, and he regularly sees to the delivery of gold bullion to the bank where he works. But he wants more out of life. One day he happens upon an idea to get the gold for himself and brings in a small group of accomplices with him to pull off a robbery. Henry plots the theft of one million pounds of gold, and suddenly the meek Henry becomes “Dutch,” the leader of The Lavender Hill Mob. The heist is successful, but the best laid plans of mice and men. Slowly, the intricate plan begins to fall away by pieces, and just maybe the law is on to Dutch and the Lavender Hill Mob.

Many film fans consider The Lavender Hill Mob to be one of the three great Ealing Studios comedies. Studio writer T.E.B. Clarke won an Oscar® for this film’s screenplay, which it is clever and occasionally witty, but mostly dry. Director Charles Crichton has his moments – most of them in the last second half of the film: the Eiffel Tower descent, Henry and Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) attempting to buy a cruise ship ticket, and the police car chase are among some of the best moments.

But the true star is Alec Guinness. By turns clever and subtle and droll and menacing, the film revolves around him, and he sells the entire thing. The film is not a great feat in directing or writing, but it is about a great actor who can so become a character that the audience buys into the character. Henry Holland is an interesting and intriguing fellow, and you may want to watch his every move. Sir Alec seems totally confident in what he’s doing before the camera. He’s the focal point, and the audience lives and dies with him, viewing the story entirely from Henry’s point of view. Many actors get us to buy into their characters because of the actors’ star power. Sir Alec did it by creating a character we want to know and through whom we want to live vicariously – a great performance that makes The Lavender Hill Mob memorable.

7 of 10
B+

NOTES:
1953 Academy Awards: 1 win: “Best Writing, Story and Screenplay” (T.E.B. Clarke) and l nomination: “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Alec Guinness)

1952 BAFTA Awards: 1 win: “Best British Film” and 1 nomination: “Best Film from any Source”

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Olympian Khatuna Lorig as "Katniss Everdeen" from "The Hunger Games"

In anticipation of the release of The Hunger Games on Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand, and Digital Download on August 18, 2012 at 12:01 A.M. Lionsgate has released this image of Olympic Archer Khatuna Lorig posing as "Katniss Everdeen," the young heroine of The Hunger Games series.

Team USA member Khatuna Lorig was there at the beginning to teach actress Jennifer Lawrence how to shoot a bow and arrow in preparation for her iconic starring role. In this image, Olympian Khatuna Lorig poses as “Katniss Everdeen” in a replica jacket from the film, with a symbolic mockingjay pin, in celebration of The Hunger Games’ huge and lasting impact on the sport.

According to Lionsgate, The Hunger Games global phenomenon has inspired a surging popularity in the sport of archery demonstrated even further by the success of the United States Archery Team at the Olympics.  As of this writing, the U.S. trio of Brady Ellison, Jacob Wukie and Jake Kaminski has won the U.S.'s only archery medal in the London Games; that is the silver medal in the men's team event. It is USA Archery's first Olympic medal since 2000, and was the first medal won by the U.S. Olympic team at the London Games.

The Associated Press (via Yahoo) offers this article, "5 things to know about archery:"

Review: Naughty "Bad Santa" is Quite Nice (Happy B'day, Billy Bob Thornton)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 170 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux


Bad Santa (2003)
Running time: 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes)
MPAA – R for pervasive language, strong sexual content and some violence
DIRECTOR: Terry Zwigoff
WRITERS: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, with contributions from Joel Coen, Ethan Cohen, Arnie Marx, and Terry Zwigoff
PRODUCERS: Sarah Aubrey, John Cameron, and Bob Weinstein
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jamie Anderson (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Robert Hoffman
COMPOSER: David Kitay

COMEDY/CRIME with elements of drama

Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly, Lauren Graham, Lauren Tom, Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Ajay Naidu, Octavia Spencer, and Ethan Phillips

The subject of this movie review is Bad Santa, a 2003 crime comedy and Christmas movie from director Terry Zwigoff. Although Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are credited as the film’s only writers, Joel Coen, Ethan Cohen, Arnie Marx, and Terry Zwigoff performed various rewrites of the script, with the Coen Bros. also credited as executive producers on the film. Bad Santa was the late actor John Ritter’s last film appearance.

Some bovine in the media have already asked, “Is nothing sacred?” in response to director Terry Zwigoff’s (Ghost World) new Christmas movie, Bad Santa. They can get over it. Bad Santa is the Christmas movie for the rest of us – those who don’t buy all the must-be-happy hype, over consumption, and phony religious tradition. Besides, it’s so damn funny.

Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) is a department store Santa. He’s also a lecherous, nympho-manical alcoholic. For the past several holiday seasons, Willie and his dwarf partner, Marcus (Tony Cox), play Santa and elf in department stores. They case the businesses and eventually rob the store safes of tens of thousands of dollars. They move to Arizona for their next big heist, but they run into a few problems. One is fastidious store manager (John Ritter in his final film role). Another is a sly store dick (Bernie Mac) who discovers their scam and wants in on the action. The biggest stumbling block is when a lonely, strange boy (Brett Kelly) whom Willie calls The Kid, latches onto Willie for friendship.

The movie has a few rough and dry spots, but otherwise it’s hilarious. Bad Santa is dark, foul, and vulgar, but it’s not cynical. Many of the characters are just not the kind usually found in holiday fare. These are people who live on the periphery of society, lonely people, and criminals. Willie is depressed and suicidal. The Kid may not be mentally handicapped, but he’s a bit of a retard – euphemistically speaking. As dark as it is, however, Bad Santa is quite hilarious in the way it deals with frank sexual matter, people who are frankly sexual, and conniving criminals who’ll do whatever it takes to get what they want. Maybe the most frightening thing for many people is how much profane language is directed at children in the film. Willie consistently curses at The Kid, and as Santa, at children who come to the store to sit on his foul lap.

But Thornton is a fine actor with grand talent. His Willie is a living, breathing, and believable person whose life is falling apart. He and Zwigoff handle Willie’s transformation with subtleness and a kind of brazenness that surprises the viewer at each turn. In fact, Zwigoff masterfully directs the film, knowing, except for some poor moments, just when to hit the viewer on the head with blunt coarseness and when to gently splash the mire in our faces. Zwigoff pulls off the trick of making this film roughly anti-sentimental and sentimentally rough. In a way, Zwigoff does manage to make the typical Christmas movie, and it’s good that he does it the way he does.

I heartily recommend Bad Santa to anyone who can take it. This film also has one of the better Bernie Mac performances. This is the moment he proves that he is a comedian and an actor, and it’s in performances like this that he can find the road to being both a good comic and dramatic actor. Good Bernie Mac is always reason to see something.

7 of 10
A-

NOTES:
2004 Golden Globes, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical” (Billy Bob Thornton)

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Original "Total Recall" Still a Total Beast

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 64 (of 2012) by Leroy Douresseaux


Total Recall (1990)
Running time: 113 minutes (1 hour, 53 minutes)
MPAA – R
DIRECTOR: Paul Verhoeven
WRITERS: Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, and Gary Goldman; from a screen story by Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon and Jon Povill (inspired by the short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick)
PRODUCERS: Buzz Feitshans and Ronald Shusett
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jost Vacano
EDITORS: Carlos Puente and Frank J. Urioste
COMPOSER: Jerry Goldsmith
Academy Award winner

SCI-FI/FANTASY/ACTION

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, Michael Ironside, Marshall Bell, Mel Johnson, Jr., and Michael Champion

The subject of this movie review is Total Recall, a 1990 science fiction action film from director Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film is loosely based upon Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” which was first published in 1966. The film follows a man who accidentally has memories dredged up of a life he apparently had on Mars, which only gets him marked for death.

Total Recall opens on Earth in the year 2084. Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a construction worker who yearns for more in his life. He is also troubled by dreams of Mars; in fact, he is obsessed with going to Mars. His wife, Lori (Sharon Stone), wants a different vacation, so Quaid decides to get a vacation to Mars in a unique way. He goes to a company called “Rekall,” which promises to implant memories of a virtual vacation. These false memories will seem just like real memories to Quaid.

However, something goes terribly wrong during the procedure to implant the memories in Quaid’s brain. Suddenly, his visit to Rekall is apparently the reason gun-toting men, led by the ruthless Richter (Michael Ironside), want to kill him. Quaid discovers that he has to get to Mars – for real this time – as soon as he can, because all the answers to his shattered memories are there… he hopes.

I believe that the Dutch-born filmmaker, Paul Verhoeven, does not get enough credit as a terrific director. This is because the amount of violence in his film is seen as excessive by some critics. Indeed, Verhoeven’s science fiction films, Robocop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997), both contain copious amounts of violence, some of it so intense and gory that it made me cringe when I first watched these films.

However, there is also a strong undercurrent of humor in Verhoeven’s science fiction films. Some of it is black humor, but some of it mocks militarized institutions, such as corporations (Robocop), governments (Starship Troopers), and governments that are really corporations, as in Total Recall. Verhoeven and his screenwriters find absurdity in how such institutions are singularly focused on their goals and treat their employees, as well as others who get in their way, as expendable. This film is practically a metaphor for our modern resource wars and for people like the Neocons (best exemplified by former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and mustachioed toad-humper, John Bolton).

Total Recall also received a Special Achievement Academy Award for its visual effects, which is usually a competitive award, but not in 1991. The special effects for the other films in the visual effects category simply did not match up to the effects in Total Recall. Thus, the committee that oversees this award for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) simply gave the award to Total Recall and named the other films as runners-up rather than as nominees. Honestly, Total Recall’s effects still look very good, and even the dated elements, such as the animatronics that are supposed to replicate heads and bodies of many of the characters, look good.

People probably remember Total Recall as an “Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,” and, in a way, it is. His film persona dominates the narrative and the action, and even 22 years later, his performance here reveals why, for a period, he was the biggest action movie star in the world and probably the world’s biggest movie star for most of that time.

Total Recall, however, is more than just Schwarzenegger. There are a number of good supporting performances, especially Michael Champion as Richter’s acerbic right-hand man, Helm. Also, Rachel Ticotin as Melina is one of the few actresses to play a partner to one of Schwarzenegger’s characters and not disappear in the shadow that Arnold’s personality and presence cast.

When I first saw Total Recall 22 years ago, I was lukewarm about it. I seem to remember that Meryl Streep was publicly critical of it. I think that I am more open-minded about movies now, and I have also learned not to view every film in a strictly literal manner. Perhaps, that is why I now think Total Recall is a science fiction movie classic, even if I didn’t think that two decades ago.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1991 Academy Awards: 1 win: “Special Achievement Award: (Eric Brevig, Rob Bottin Tim McGovern, Alex Funke for visual effects) [The other films in this category were listed as runners-up instead of as nominees: Back to the Future Part III, Dick Tracy, and Ghost.]; 2 nominations: Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing” (Stephen Hunter Flick) and “Best Sound” (Nelson Stoll, Michael J. Kohut, Carlos Delarios, and Aaron Rochin)

1991 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Special Visual Effects” (To the whole special visual effects production team)

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Review: "The People Under the Stairs" Got Woke Decades Ago (Happy B'day, Wes Craven)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 30 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs (1991)
Running time: 102 minutes (1 hour, 42 minutes)
MPAA – R for terror/violence
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Wes Craven
PRODUCERS: Marianne Maddalena and Stuart M. Besser
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Sandi Sissel
EDITOR: James Coblentz
COMPOSER: Don Peake

FANTASY/HORROR/THRILLER

Starring: Brandon Quintin Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A.J. Langer, Ving Rhames, Sean Whalen, Bill Cobbs, Jeremy Roberts, and Kelly Jo Minter

The subject of this movie review is The People Under the Stairs, a 1991 horror and fantasy film from director Wes Craven. The film has elements of the folk tale and urban legend. It focuses on an African-American boy who steals into a mysterious house to look for gold and finds that some of the stories about the house are true.

A young boy nicknamed Fool (Brandon Adams) assists two thieves, Leroy (Ving Rhames) and Spenser (Jeremy Roberts), so they can break into the fortified home of a reclusive and mysterious couple (Everett McGill and Wendy Robie), who are reportedly very rich. However, Fool ends up trapped inside the house, where he learns the couple’s horrifying secret. In the basement of their home, they have imprisoned a group of young men they kidnapped when they were boys. Fool also befriends the couple’s abused daughter, Alice (A.J. Langer), and together they try to free the people under the stairs.

Many people might scoff at the idea that the wealth of any ghetto or neighborhood is hidden in some rich, reclusive family’s house. However, it is not unusual that one family or small group of families and business interests own most of the businesses and property in a particular neighborhood or small town. Sometimes, the owners of most wealth in a poor neighborhood are people that live outside of the area. Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs takes this idea and turns it into a horror movie told as if it were an urban legend or folktale. For decades, one inbred, crazy family has been overcharging people for coffins and other funeral services and also growing fat and wealthy as slum landlords. This kind of family makes an ideal movie villain; put the concept in Wes Craven’s (known for directing A Nightmare on Elm Street and all three Scream movies) hands and you have the makings of a creepy thriller.

In The People Under the Stairs, the house is the star. Filled with many nooks and crannies, crawlspaces between the walls that are like pathways, a huge attic, a massive cellar, hiding spaces behind the paneling, soundproof windows and walls, barred windows, electrified doorknobs and other sadistic security devices, lots of empty rooms, the house is a great space for a chase scenes in which a desperate little black boy runs from the big, mean white man.

Craven chose Brandon Adams, a young black actor, as the hero for The People Under the Stairs because (he said in an interview) African-Americans made up a big part of the audience for horror movies, so he figured he should cast one as a lead. Adams is spunky and certainly up for the effort, even if he isn’t a stellar actor. Ving Rhames makes the most of his small part, adding a nice presence to the film. Everett McGill and Wendy Robie are delightful, campy trash as the villains and make the parts theirs alone.

The People Under the Stairs isn’t classic horror, but it’s a fun, small horror movie that holds up (at least for me) to repeated viewings. It’s certainly an example of why Wes Craven can take just about anything and make it an amusing horror flick or credible thriller.

6 of 10
B

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Wes Craven Working on Upcoming Graphic Novel, "Coming of Rage"

WES CRAVEN & STEVE NILES PARTNER ON NEW LIQUID COMICS PROJECT "COMING OF RAGE"

Prolific filmmaker of ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ & ‘Scream’ partners with the creator of ‘30 Days of Night’ to Launch His First Graphic Novel

Liquid Comics announced today a new graphic novel in production, “Coming of Rage,” created by legendary filmmaker Wes Craven (Scream, The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street) and written by acclaimed graphic novelist, Steve Niles (30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Wake the Dead).

"I'm thrilled to be working with Steve Niles, since I've admired his work for so long. And the concept behind ‘Coming of Rage’ is one I've been dying to explore. Steve has raised it to a whole new level with his script, and the folks at Liquid Comic are now bringing it to life with their incredible artwork. I can't wait for you all to see and read it!” commented Craven.

“Wes Craven is not only a great writer, producer and director, he is one of the most knowledgeable people I've had the honor to work with. I not only had fun working on ‘Coming of Rage,’ I also learned a great deal," added Niles.

Details on Craven’s story have not yet been released and Liquid plans to launch the project as a five issue comic-book series and subsequent collected graphic novel, starting early next year. In addition to print, Liquid will launch a number of digital initiatives allowing Craven’s fans to experience his graphic novel story across a variety of platforms including online or through their iPad, iPhone and other mobile and gaming devices.

Producer Arnold Rifkin of Cheyenne Enterprises (Hostage, 16 Blocks, Live Free or Die Hard) and Liquid Comics Co-Founder & CEO, Sharad Devarajan are working with Craven on developing a feature film adaptation of the graphic novel.

“Wes Craven and Steve Niles are masters of the horror genre. The opportunity to bring them together for Wes’s first graphic novel project is my fanboy dream come true,” added Devarajan. “Each of them alone has terrified audiences for decades, so we can only imagine what horrors await as they finally team-up on ‘Coming of Rage.’”


ABOUT LIQUID COMICS:
Liquid Comics is a digital entertainment company focused on creating cinematic and mythic graphic novel stories with filmmakers, creators and storytellers. The company was founded by entrepreneurs, Sharad Devarajan, Gotham Chopra and Suresh Seetharaman and uses the medium of digital graphic novel publishing to develop properties for theatrical live-action films, animation and video games. Liquid has created and is creating original graphic novels with acclaimed filmmakers and talents including John Woo, Guy Ritchie, Grant Morrison, Shekhar Kapur, Deepak Chopra, Dave Stewart, Marc Guggenheim, Marcus Nispel, Jonathan Mostow, Edward Burns, Nicolas Cage, John Moore, Wes Craven, Barry Sonnenfeld and others. The Company currently has a number of film and television projects in development based on their properties.

www.LiquidComics.com

Negromancer Opens in a Dark August 2012

Welcome to Negromancer, the rebirth of the former movie review website as a movie review and movie news blog. Visit Negromancer's sister blog at http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/.

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